


Clinically Insane

by RiaZ



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst and Humor, Insanity, M/M, Slow Burn, insane asylum
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-09-23 15:27:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20342386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiaZ/pseuds/RiaZ
Summary: The word echoed around Roman's cell - he was not blind enough to call it a room any longer - but strangely, not around his head. Perhaps because the cell had nothing inside other than the husk that was Roman. His mind, however, was currently filled with chaos.Insane.The inability to be sane, to order thoughts, to be sointhe concept ofsanitythat it warped and morphed into the opposite.Or maybe it was just the effect of falling in love with Virgil.Either way, Roman considered himself a fool.





	1. The Definition of Welcome

Blustering winds greeted Roman on the day he was admitted to the insane asylum.

Later, he would not remember the murky faces of the people walking with him. He would remember the wind, though – the wicked thing that whipped his hair around his face, coaxing the bare skin of his face into a stinging mess. It was not a thing of summer, that wind – it was a thing that was bred in the crooks of mountains, raised by winter and housed by the rolling hills where the Sanderium Insane Asylum was caged. 

The cobblestone road faded miserably into mere stones, moss faltering out somewhere between the unspoken but present line that marked the asylum grounds. At first, Roman didn’t notice. Then, the fences sprung into his vision after he was steered past the tall, suffocating hedges. 

“To keep the locals out,” the woman at Roman’s side murmured to him. 

“To keep the crazies in,” corrected the man. 

Both of these observations struck him as ridiculous. Firstly, there were no locals. The nearest town had been the one that they’d come from – more than an hour’s walk away. Secondly, and more importantly, there were no crazies here. Roman only knew this because the woman had told him that he belonged here, that he was going to stay here until he got better. 

If he belonged here, this was no place for crazies.

One thing he did not doubt, however, was that the fences would do their job regardless of caging things in or scaring intruders off. Cruel things, those fences – wire twisted and tortured into shapes built for tearing. The wind and the fence went well together.

Roman’s legs and lungs were burning by the time they reached the front door to the old building. None of their group bothered or dared to knock – the doors were opened for them, revealing the equally gloomy interior. 

“Welcome,” a deep voice said. 

Roman did not think he was welcome. He belonged with the wind, outside of the fences, where the wilderness crooned for him. He did not belong in a place where deep voices told him that he was welcome but sounded as though Roman was just as welcome to wither and die on the doorstep.

“Roman,” the woman’s voice somewhere above him said, her hand on his shoulder. “Go on.”

He shook off the wave of revulsion that arose in his stomach at the weight of her touch through his shirt – a feat that pressured him into stepping away from the hand and neatly in through the door, his ragged boots smearing dirt onto the white tile of the entrance hall. _Tile_, he deliberately noted, _was not a floor for entrance halls._

The deep voice thundered into being yet again. “Do you wish to say goodbye?”

Roman looked carefully at the owner of the deep voice but wished quite quickly that he hadn’t. The man was nothing short of curt temper built into human form, the dirty white coat more like a second skin tightly and unkindly binding his body together. His nametag told Roman that he was a Doctor, but not much more than that; his name had been smudged out from under the plastic cardholder long ago.

He switched his attention back to the pair of people that had painstakingly brought him across countryside to be caged and filed away. The woman murmured some words that might have been a curse or a confession, but Roman’s hearing was a thing that wavered with his attention; he did not hear her. 

Or perhaps he did, but he forgot as he heard. Such things were common in the ruined wreck that was Roman’s mind. He was not crazy – but his mind did not work in the same way of his parents, and he liked himself well enough to be glad of that fact.

The man did not say anything, except to nod a conspirator’s nod at the Doctor. He gathered the woman in his arms and walked steadily away from Roman as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Roman did not cry as his parents left him, but he decidedly did not like the way that the Doctor smiled at him as he closed the double doors. His teeth were like the grave of the name on his nametag; smudged, chipped, grey. 

“What’s your name?” 

The Doctor stopped smiling and tapped on his plastic nametag twice, sharply, with fingernails that were strangely long. “Can’t read it?”

After a beat, Roman answered truthfully. “No.” Whilst a short answer, it was perhaps the hardest to give, because it was an honest one. He was honest only a select few times during the day – and he could most definitely not read whatever name used to be on the nametag. 

“They never can when they’re brought in young,” the Doctor said, and walked down the corridor to the right. Roman followed, ignoring the stinging complaints of his legs as he was forced to take two steps to every one of the Doctor’s. “You’re only twelve, after all. Lasted quite a long time, didn’t you, compared to the others?”

“Yes,” Roman answered, because he thought it was the correct thing to say. From the way that the Doctor shot him a slyly amused glance, Roman gathered that it was. The Doctor passed through many doors – some, mere plastic things that looked as though they could be brought down with a well-placed kick. Others, heavy things that had chains and grates that required keys or the Doctor to provide a code.

“You’ll be on the second floor. That’s where all low-level crazies go, at first. You do your best to stay there, you hear? You don’t want to move down floors, because that’ll get you close to the basement.”

Roman considered this as he passed what must have been a checkpoint – a stone-faced nurse looking over both the Doctor and Roman carefully before jerking her head towards a metal staircase. “What’s in the basement?”

“You’re asking the right question,” the Doctor said. “It’s when you start asking _who_’s down there that you’ve lost.”

Fighting the temptation to ask who, indeed, was in the basement proved the hardest thing Roman had attempted to do in the last ten minutes. But he managed to swallow his question as the Doctor announced that they’d arrived on floor two and the somewhat white number two mounted on the wall in front of the staircase proved it. Disappointment flared inside Roman’s stomach – the interior of the asylum was exactly how he’d expected it to be. 

“That number two is new,” Roman told the Doctor as they passed it. He didn’t look surprised as he nodded, knocking twice on an office door. 

“You can tell because it could still be mistaken for white.”

“Maybe,” Roman said, his face scrunching as his deduction was easily guessed. 

The silence between them stretched poignantly until the Doctor groaned and led Roman on. “He must be attending lunch service. Not in his office.”

Roman’s hearing homed in on the one word that mattered. “Lunch?” The Doctor opened the final metal door with a trace of difficulty, revealing the scene beyond it. Roman answered his own question, simply because it pleased him to do so. “Ah. Lunch.”

“Your evaluation will be passed after,” the Doctor told him, leaving him at the head of the room alone. “I’ll come to you.”

The adults were converging on a raised stage at the head of the room, long metal tables housing several of what must have been patients – clothes that were grey and loose, distinctive from the white of the nurses. Roman was not blind enough to miss the fact that people were starting to look at him.

It was not a pleasant look – it would not have been misplaced if they’d given those looks to their food in front of them instead of him. Roman had never been one to feel embarrassed at other people’s interest, but it was not a comfortable thing to be sized up by the people surrounding him. 

He stood in the doorway a moment too long – a person’s snicker prompted a few more hushed giggles as they continued to stare.

They did not seem crazy to Roman; their eyes were aware. Brightly so, wickedly in some. But all increasingly aware of what was going on around them. A boy was staring particularly hard at him, and Roman decided to try his luck over on his table – for he was the only one sat there. 

The boy smiled brightly as he realized Roman’s intentions.

“Are you a cat or a dog person?”

Roman slid into the seat, wincing as his legs promptly experienced their first break of the day. “Does it matter?”

The boy pouted, looking up at Roman through his eyelashes and tilting his head forward so that he could directly look at him from above the rim of his glasses. “If you want to continue sitting here,” he posed, tapping the metal table in front of him, “then you have to give me the right answer.”

Roman chanced a glance around the room – noting how the patients were now less curious of him and more curious of what he was going to say. Conversation was non-existent, and if the strange boy in front of him cared about it, he didn’t show it. Perhaps he’d given the same test to all of the children in the room as them, but those children had all failed – making it plausible that they’d wait to see if Roman passed.

“I’m not either of them,” Roman carefully answered, trying to glean information from the boy’s face. He was unsuccessful; the freckled boy may have been wearing a mask, for all the expression that he showed. “I’m a human person.”

A beat passed.

The boy in front of him laughed, clapping his hand only once, the sound echoing around the room. “That’s the right answer! My name’s Patton.”

Roman smiled back at him, which was not particularly the facial expression he wished to have shown but was the one that was immediately drawn from the shift in aura of the boy. “My name’s Roman.”

“Roman,” Patton repeated, drawing out the syllables with a wide smile. “I’m sure I’ve heard that name somewhere before.”

Roman leaned forwards slightly, spurred on by that simple smile. “You might have done – you see, I’m a Prince.” Roman was not a Prince in the slightest sense of the word. But in that moment where Patton heard him say it and saw the delight and awe spark in his eyes, Roman felt like one.

Patton did not seem at all perturbed by a few of the listening people sniggering, although Roman felt their correct doubt lodge in his confidence. “What’s a Prince doing here?”

“Spying,” Roman murmured, his voice shifting automatically to the lowest pitch that he could manage. “I’m going to collect information and use it to shut this place down, so that we can all go free.”

“Free?” Patton whispered back, a surprised laugh working its way through his lips. “I’ve been here for six years already – to be free would be amazing!”

It seemed that Patton’s pleased smile was infectious, but it was not a disease that Roman was unwilling to catch. “Wouldn’t it?” 

Roman had to work to hide the sinking feeling in his chest – it seemed as though his dream of being free was shared. And when a thing was shared, it was incredibly difficult to get back to being wholly his own – so it was no longer his dream. The moment Patton had looked delighted about its existence, it twisted and morphed to become _their_ dream. 

He did not think it was the worst thing in the world; it was merely a thing that he now wished to live up to. As Patton helpfully supplied most of the conversation, Roman’s attention wandered and caught a nap as the time allotted for lunch dragged on. He was painfully drawn back into awareness, however, as a bell was rung by one of the nurses at the head of the table. 

The patients unanimously stood up in one fluid movement, a thing that startled Roman into standing abruptly in response. 

Too quickly – he’d moved too quickly, and lights flashed between his eyes as the world swam. 

“Slow to get up, are we?” 

Roman winked a goodbye at Patton as the Doctor watched him, carefully, as though he were already taking notes. The Doctor didn’t bother waiting for the boys to further bid each other farewell as he walked off, following a stern-looking man back towards the office that they’d originally gone to. 

Patton grinned and followed his peers through the opposite door, leaving Roman to enter another Doctor’s office on his own.

“You don’t like crowds, Roman?” 

Roman decided he liked this other Doctor better than the one that had led him here. “I do – but not them.”

The man leaned back in his chair; it was a movement that Roman found charming enough that he copied it. “My name is Doctor Delbruck, and I’m the head of level two. You’ve already met Doctor Crichten, who led you here.”

Roman glared pointedly at Crichten, who looked merely delighted at the fury emitted by the twelve-year-old boy. “He didn’t answer any of my questions.”

Delbruck laughed, but Roman did not find this gesture charming. It was the type of laugh that had been carefully constructed over years of practice, every sound calculated, its pitch debated. “I’m sure he did his best, Roman. Now, can you tell me why you sat where you did at lunch? I’m curious.”

Curiosity was a trait that Roman liked, that he groomed into something useful. He could forgive this man in front of him for falling prey to it, and so he humoured him with an answer. “Patton was the only one smiling like he meant it.” It was true, and Roman felt quietly proud of himself for the number of truths he’d told today. 

“Patton,” Delbruck repeated, his eyes trained on Romans even as he scribbled what must have been Patton’s name on the paper in front of him. “He was the only other person seated on that table, was he not?”

“No,” Roman replied quickly, and then scrambled to come up with a sentence to follow it with. The moment a clever quip came to his mind, he smiled in relief. “I was sat at that table. It was just us.”

Delbruck nodded, his mouth pleasantly flat. “I don’t want you talking to Patton again, Roman. He’s dangerously manipulative, I’m afraid.”

Roman nodded as if this made sense to him, regardless of the fact that it most definitely did not make sense. “Feel free to let me out if you don’t want me talking to him. He’s the only one with a kind smile.”

“Is my smile not kind?” Delbruck asked, seeming to be quite interested in Roman’s answer.

Roman no longer found him charming. “Can I leave?”

Crichten laughed – a sharp contrast to the clean thing that was Delbruck’s. “I think this one will be fun,” he said, and although his eyes were on Roman, Roman knew that his words were not meant for him. 

Delbruck’s groomed eyebrow rose, and he fell perfectly back into Roman’s description of looking strict. “You can leave for now, Roman,” he said, tapping his pen twice on the nearly blank piece of paper in front of him. “For now. I’ll see you soon.”

“I don’t think you will,” Roman told him. “You might look at me, but you won’t see me.”

“Unfortunately for you,” Crichten said as he steered Roman back through the door, “Delbruck is extraordinarily good at seeing you.”

“How can you tell?” Roman asked.

“Because it’s his job to see problems,” Crichten said, and led him promptly down the hall.


	2. The Definition of Sneaky

“Patton, if you don’t learn to be sneaky, I will begin to do these heists without you.”

Rain was lashing fiercely against the windowpane, eliminating the normal need for Roman to lower his voice when talking to his neighbour. Their rooms – whether by luck or by the Doctors deciding on a rare stroke of kindness – were next to each other, which made it extraordinarily easy for the boys to amuse each other. 

Patton laughed at the obvious lie, and Roman took a moment to ponder the sound before deciding that it was real. “Your definition of sneaky is different from mine,” Patton said. Roman frowned in response before collapsing on his bed, ignoring the hardness of the mattress below him.

Their rooms had remained much the same since Roman had arrived two years ago; grey walls, grey floor that was a strange mixture between stone and plastic, one wall of bars so that the Doctors could ensure there would be no place for the patients to hide. Luckily, their tiny bathrooms were the only truly private place that they possessed – although they were limited in the amount of lukewarm water the patients could use. 

Escape was futile – even if the patient were desperate enough to use drowning themselves as an option. 

“You just don’t appreciate good acting,” Roman said, perhaps a moment too late to appear truly interested. He didn’t doubt that Patton inferred it, from the amused twist in his reply.

“I don’t see the need for acting if there isn’t an audience.”

“Heathen,” Roman said, fondly.

Patton hummed, and the familiar sound of the barred door opening was music to Roman’s ears. He turned his head to see Patton pouting at his own bars. “Crichten said name calling was the lowest form of humour,” he said, wielding the metal lockpicks in his hands as he eyed Roman’s lock. 

“He told me yesterday that it was sarcasm,” Roman replied, despite the fact that no such conversation had taken place. “He must be lying to one of us.”

Shrugging, Patton opened Roman’s door with practiced ease, and Roman bounded from his bed with newfound energy. Patton strolled down the corridor as if he were perfectly comfortable, stretching his hands behind his head as he hummed a tune. 

Roman was much more, to use his own term, sneaky.

He rolled onto the floor, keeping himself low and quiet and delighting himself by checking behind him at every opportunity. Patients were all in their bedrooms and although Doctors were regular with checking in on them, Roman and Patton had long since noticed that their rounds were scarce when it rained.

Storms meant that sounds from the basement could be blamed on the wind, after all. 

Roman was far too concerned looking behind him that he didn’t notice Patton had halted until Patton snaked out his arm to tap the back of Roman’s head, allowing the sneakier of them to jerk his head around. “What? Doctors?”

They heaved themselves closer to the wall, peering around the corner to where the dining room was situated. “Not a Doctor,” Patton breathed. “A patient.”

Excitement sparked inside Roman’s veins. 

It dimmed only slightly on seeing the same emotion running much more dangerously through Patton’s brown eyes, fixed firmly on the newest patient’s silhouette. “He’s alone,” Roman noted.

Patton nodded, his eyes never wavering from the boy seated with his back to them at one of the longer dining tables. “Why would they leave him alone?” 

The boy was perhaps a few months older than Roman – taller, but physically slighter. Dark hair and the black frames of his glasses drew the eye, an anchor in the sea of grey that was their insane world. “Everyone’s meant to be locked in their rooms,” Roman said. “He couldn’t hurt us, and we couldn’t hurt him. No harm in leaving him.”

“But,” Patton murmured, his hand reaching to grab Roman’s, “there’s meant to be an evaluation.”

Roman heard the unspoken rest of his friend’s question. “But what kind of evaluation is being done without the patient there?”

“I can hear you.”

Roman’s heart did not miss a beat, but he practically felt Patton’s pulse rocket in his wrist as his hand clenched tightly around Roman’s. The boy had still not turned around, but his voice alone had struck Patton immobile – cold, lofty, imperious.

If Roman dared to feel poetic, he would have described it as clean and beautiful.

He did not feel poetic, however, and the sound of this new boy’s voice immediately had his back stiffening. 

“You have functional ears,” Roman said, louder. “Are we supposed to be impressed?”

The boy turned his head a fraction – still not enough to let either of them see his face, but enough that high cheekbones and a proud arch of an eyebrow could be seen. “I didn’t come here to impress insane people.”

“No, you came here for a holiday, surely,” Roman said, damning caution to hell as he began to drag Patton forward. Patton, it seemed, suddenly wished to convert into the sneakiness that Roman had been trying to conform him to before – he dug his heels into the tile, which did nothing except make Roman work his muscles a bit harder. “Let me guess – you came because you admired the architecture.”

“Big word for a brain so small,” the boy replied. 

Roman would have growled had he not possessed the constant fear that his voice would break at the attempt. Instead, he merely abandoned Patton’s hand and stalked around to sit opposite his newest enemy. 

Unsurprisingly and yet still irritatingly, the boy had a pleasant face. 

Not a single smudge or pimple in sight, all clean lines that were odd in a face that should have still retained some hint of childish roundness. The lenses of the glasses were clear, hair slicked back.

_Ah_, thought Roman. _Rich boy wasn’t wanted by his parents._

Said rich boy scoffed as he scanned Roman, his dark eyes surely picking up on far more than Roman had behind those glasses. “Spare me your evaluation; I don’t care for it. I’m only concerned about the Doctor’s.”

Patton sat beside Roman, his hands tapping the rhythm to a tune that only he could really hear. “Your name is Logan, you’re fifteen and you are suspected of being a psychopath although technically, the Doctors can’t diagnose that.”

Roman was not jarred – he’d learnt quite a lot about his strange friend of two years, and that was enough to prepare him for moments where he was reminded why, exactly, Patton was in an insane asylum. What he did not expect, however, was that Logan did not look in the slightest bit phased. 

His eyes narrowed, but it was not in shock – rather, it was suspicion. 

_Psychopath._ Roman prodded the word in his mind, following the strings of his understanding, deciding on how to react. He found that he enjoyed the word, was impressed by its sound. It sounded extraordinarily better than _compulsive liar_, which was just one of his own titles that he’d amassed during his stay here. _Attention deficit; hyperactive; compulsive liar. _

None of those measured up to the dangerous title of _psychopath._

“I saw it on a file,” Patton said, sounding to the world as innocent as a child brought up not knowing any other way. 

Logan looked flatly unimpressed, which only served as amusing to Roman. “You must have been looking for that information to be able to find it.”

Patton’s lips formed a pout. “I don’t lie. It was on a file on Delbruck’s desk. I just happened to read it when I was being ignored in there.” Roman believed this – only because it would not upset him if he found out that it was a lie. Logan arched an eyebrow, his eyes now settled on Patton. 

“What other things have you not been looking for but have still seen?”

Roman very obviously attempted to not gag. “If you’re going to flirt, do it where I can’t see.”

Logan did not look bothered or flustered in the slightest, unperturbed that his firmly information-related question had been mockingly turned into an innuendo. Patton, on the other hand, blushed. “Close your eyes then. We rarely get new people willing to talk to me.”

He did not mention that it was rare for _anyone_ to talk to him, regardless of whether they were new or not. Following Patton’s lead, Roman offered his best attempt at an eye roll before switching his attention to the distant wailing of the wind. 

At least, he hoped it was the wind. 

He blinked slowly, trying to guide his attention back to the two people talking in front of him. His attention did not come calmly but rewarded him at the end by focussing on a more important issue – approaching footsteps.

Roman knew better than to leap to his feet, which would only serve to make noise. He got up slowly, hand already on Patton’s elbow. “We have to go. Welcome to the insane asylum, nerd.”

Logan looked the most insulted at the mocking name than he had done during the entire interaction. “Nerd?”

Shrugging and walking briskly away was harder for Roman to concentrate on, but he managed it, dragging Patton along. “Isn’t that what psychopath means?”

He knew that it was most definitely not what psychopath meant, but it pleased him to see the dumfounded expression on Logan’s otherwise perfect mask. Patton took over with the leading, swinging them both around the corner just in time to miss being seen by Doctor Crichten, who was busy taking off gloves and throwing them into the bin at the end of the table.

“We’re just about finished with your evaluation,” Crichten told Logan, who didn’t hesitate to stand and follow. “Now, you’re on level two –“

The pair walked through the metal door that Roman had now gotten used to, their footsteps masked by the pattering of the rain on the roof. Roman didn’t bother to wait till the sounds had faded as he lightly ran over to the bin, leaning daintily forwards as he gingerly picked up Crichten’s gloves from the bin using only one finger hooked into the thin plastic. 

“It’s bloody,” Patton said, confirming Roman’s suspicion. “The basement.”

Roman nodded as he dropped the glove back into the bin, careful not to get any of the blood on himself. “Always the basement when it rains.”

The pair began walking back to the corner they’d just snuck out from, abandoning whatever plans for a heist they’d planned yesterday. After all, it hadn’t been raining yesterday, and they were not eager for the Doctors to become bored with whatever they were doing to whoever they had in the basement and find them making trouble.

It was an unspoken understanding between them, but it came far too late.

The metal door shrieked wickedly as it opened, crooning at the fact it was revealing both Patton and Roman’s backs to the Doctor opening it. Roman did not let go of Patton’s hand as he looked over his shoulder, trying to maintain the perfect picture of irreverence that he’d structured over the two years he’d stayed here.

Doctor Crichten looked amused, as he always did. “Going somewhere, Roman?”

Patton’s hand turned clammy, but Roman refused to show any ounce of fear. “I wanted to take a stroll.” 

“Take a stroll into Delbruck’s office then, lad.” 

Roman couldn’t decide which he was more fearful of – the fact that Patton was being blatantly ignored, or the fact that he was being so obviously targeted. But he dropped Patton’s hand, nodding at the wide-eyed boy to carry on to his bedroom, and turned on his heel.

He stalked after Crichten, temper present in his clenched jaw and the fierce slaps of his shoes against the floor. He passed Logan waiting in the hallway, crossing his arms as he followed Roman’s movements with eyes that glittered as dangerously as knives. 

The patients weren’t allowed to eat with knives – but Roman was not too far gone as to forget about the most basic weapon besides sass just yet. He opened Delbruck’s door, not bothering to knock or to wait for a greeting and sat himself down in his favourite chair – the most comfortable one in the centre of the room. 

“Hello, Roman,” Delbruck greeted, smiling an exact copy of the smile that he’d given Roman the first day he’d been here. “Logan told us that you very kindly kept him company.”

Roman was already plotting Logan’s murder; this fact did nothing to stop this train of thought, and instead inspired a gorier route in Roman’s imagination. “I didn’t think you were so cruel as to make him wait outside whilst you tell me off.”

“We’ve known each other for longer,” Delbruck said, almost sounding wounded if Roman didn’t already know how full of rubbish he was. “Logan was polite enough to offer to wait.”

Roman made a sound that was somewhere between a grumble and a hum, wondering how it was possible for Logan to have annoyed him so extraordinarily in merely a few minutes of being aware of his existence. 

“Why were you out of your room, Roman?”

“It was raining,” Roman said, glaring up at Delbruck from under his eyelashes, scanning for any hint of dirt. He was unsuccessful; Delbruck was flawlessly clean. Too clean – by now, mid-afternoon, there should have been the barest amount of wear on his white suit. But there was not; Delbruck was the perfect example of how a man would look if he had just changed into clean robes to hide any hint as to his activities in the elusive mental asylum. 

“I’ll tell you what I think, Roman, and then you can tell me what you think.” Delbruck did not wait for a response – he merely shuffled what must have been Logan’s file and set it aside, face-up. “I think I’ve been far too lenient on you concerning your relationship with Patton. I think he had some input as to your decision to let yourself out of your room, didn’t he?”

None of this was unusual except the disappointed air that Delbruck was exuding, leaning back in his chair and fixing Roman with a sad expression. If Roman hadn’t already been convinced that the man before him was not entirely human, he may have felt a little ashamed of himself. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Delbruck tutted. “Still lying, Roman? I told you to ignore Patton, didn’t I? I’ve told you this constantly in the time you’ve been here. He’s a dangerous thing.”

“And I told you that if you let me out of here, I will ignore Patton,” Roman replied, indulgently. He didn’t mind saying things like this, because there was not a single possibility that he was going to be let out. Not with words like _compulsive liar_ and _attention deficit_ forming shackles, chaining him to this building of grey and Doctors who smiled a little too robotically. 

“If you do not cease to interact with Patton, I will be forced to move you down a level, Roman. It’ll be such a shame – you’ve done so well to remain on level two with me.”

The threat was a new one, and Roman would have been lying to himself if he’d thought it didn’t scare him. 

It did scare him. 

What it did not do, though, was force him to show Delbruck that. “Anything else?”

“We’ll be adding another lock to your room,” Delbruck said. “I think we’ll also fill that empty room next to yours; continue being pleasant to Logan, as he’ll be your new neighbour on level two if your behaviour improves enough to ensure your stay.”

It wasn’t until after Roman had been escorted back to his room (sending death glares to Logan as Crichten escorted him past the boy) that the realization struck him – there was no empty room next to his.

There was only Patton’s.


	3. The Definition of Allies

Roman checked that the room next to him was silent before starting his brief run to the dining hall. 

After that day when Logan had been unceremoniously moved into Patton’s room, the two neighbours had adopted a charming interaction known as attempting to beat the everlasting crap out of each other – whether in races, physical spars or wordplay, the two swore to each other and anyone unfortunate to be in listening distance that they were better than the other.

It was normally Patton who bore the brunt of listening to each person, and he was pleasant enough to listen in good grace.

His mood over the past few months had deteriorated – had wavered. 

Roman had sworn to change this. Unfortunately for him, Logan had taken this as a challenge and had sworn to improve Patton’s mood much more efficiently than him – hence why Roman was now charging his way to the dining room to await Patton’s arrival, aiming to get to the boy before his rival.

His plans crashed and burned around him as he slid around the corner to see Logan escorting Patton to their usual dining place, his smile poisonous as he spied Roman approaching. Roman wasted no time in descending into a likewise royally stinking mood. “You told Logan where your new room was? You haven’t even told me!” 

Logan raised an eyebrow and Roman had to wonder if it was an overreaction to contemplate murder in response. Sitting down calmly on the opposite bench to the pair was suddenly a much harder task than it should have been, but Roman managed it as he gifted Patton with his best attempt at a wounded glance.

As expected, Patton immediately fell to niceties. “I can’t tell you where my new room is! If Crichten spots you near me at any other times than mealtimes, you could be sent down a floor!”

As Roman opened his mouth to form a simply excellent and audibly stunning argument, Logan rolled his eyes and shoved a piece of bread harshly into Roman’s face instead. “You can’t be sneaky. You barely even know what it means to walk with haste.”

Roman choked the bread down, his throat tight with something other than bread. “I just don’t understand why Patton is such a problem to them.” It was an important distinction – _them_ and _us_. Roman was not so foolish as to miss this, nor to see Logan and Patton meet his eyes in understanding. 

And then, in Patton’s case, fear.

There was only one thing that could be behind Roman to make Patton look like that, and so Roman stood up slowly. “I’ll see you in Logan’s room, I suppose,” he told the pair, glad that at least Patton would have a friend whilst he followed Crichten to Delbruck’s office. 

Crichten didn’t bother with greetings as he walked briskly off, following a path that Roman knew well. 

“Hello, Roman,” Delbruck said, standing as Roman strolled in. “How are you today?”

“Fantastic,” Roman replied, instantly. “On top of the world.”

Delbruck knew it was a lie. Roman knew that Delbruck knew it was a lie, but he sat himself in his normal seat anyway. Delbruck did not call him out on it – Roman’s first clue that something was different. 

“We’ve noticed a stark improvement in your examinations,” Delbruck started, gesturing briefly to the sheet of paper that he hadn’t bothered to put away – only with Roman would he allow himself to leave papers out. Most likely to try and prove to Roman that Delbruck trusted him.

But Roman knew well enough that it was because he’d told Crichten that he couldn’t read, on that first day years ago. 

What he couldn’t read, he couldn’t use against Delbruck, after all. 

“Physical or mental?” Roman asked, to try and look like he was concentrating on the conversation instead of trying to imagine the type of threats Delbruck would come up with this time. 

“Both! You’ve been exercising, I take it?”

“Only in my room,” Roman said. “Just a bit.”

Whilst it was only in his room, it was most definitely not just a bit. Roman had been working hard for months now – to try and desperately escape looking like he could be blown away by the wind. Delbruck, though, did not need to know this. “I’m glad you’ve found something to work off that energy of yours,” Delbruck said, smiling. “We’ve also noticed your efforts to not mention Patton’s name – it’s you and Logan, now, isn’t it?”

Roman scoffed, ignoring the way that Delbruck’s eyes lit up as he said Patton’s name. “Logan is a pompous ass.”

“But you’ve been spending time with him, and not thinking about Patton. Wouldn’t you like to talk to us about this?” _Us_. Crichten was not in the room; this was Delbruck trying to see Roman as part of their own team, alone in this room. 

“Patton – how is it that he’s dangerous?”

Delbruck leaned back in his chair, folding his fingers together. “Haven’t you guessed it by now, Roman? I thought we’d made vast improvements – I thought you knew more about your own mind, now, and its dangerous imagination?”

“Dangerous?” Roman echoed, quietly confused. 

“You said this to me during your first examination,” Delbruck said, softly, holding up the piece of paper before him. “Do you know what this says?” There was only one word written at the very top of the paper – Roman followed the pleasant handwriting with his eyes, drawn into the loop of the swirl of ink, but shook his head. “You said to me that you sat with a boy called Patton on your first day – and yet, Crichten said that you sat alone.”

“Patton –“

“Patton is not real,” Delbruck said, simply, as if he wasn’t just erasing someone’s existence with a few well-placed stabs. “You imagined him, Roman. He’s dangerous because he’s formed some part of your subconscious, perhaps the manipulative part –“

Roman’s attention snapped brutally away from Delbruck and whatever words he was spouting. It made a lot of sense, as he looked back – to hear the other patient’s judging giggles as he spoke with Patton, how Delbruck had called Patton’s cell empty, how Patton was never looked at or acknowledged by anyone other than Roman. 

Perfect sense.

Apart from the fact that Roman was entirely sure he was sane, and imagining an entire person – their habits, their eyes, their jokes – was only something a truly insane person would be able to do. 

And Roman was sane. 

He was sane.

He _was_.

Sanity was such a fragile thing, but it was a thing Roman carefully nurtured. By insisting that he had it, that he groomed it and watered it and let it grow, he found that he could not think of himself as anything other than sane. 

Delbruck was still talking – but his eyes were trained onto Roman’s with a glow of bright intrigue, and Roman could tell that Delbruck knew he wasn’t listening. He swatted his attention back in the direction of Delbruck and forced it to stay there. 

“It’s why no one else sees him, after all,” Delbruck finished, leaning back in his chair. “I thought you knew – especially when I told you to keep away so many times!”

“You said he was dangerous,” Roman said, quietly. Rare – so rare for him to say anything quietly, or without some matching gesture. “If he’s my imagination, how is he dangerous?”

Delbruck smiled. “He’s a manifestation of your mind, Roman. That’s the most dangerous part of you, the most secret of your wishes, the most violent of your dreams. That’s what Patton is.”

“You should have been a poet,” Roman snapped. “Patton is not violent.”

“Now that you know the truth,” Delbruck continued, jubilant at Roman’s display of temper, “I need your word that you’ll stay away from him. That you’ll ignore him, when your mind does conjure him up. Otherwise, I will have to take more extreme measures in trying to cure you, Roman.”

Roman was instantly furious.

Seething temper bolstered its way to his skin, and he stared at Delbruck with enough of a scowl that it was only faintly surprising when the doctor did not burst into flames. Delbruck only looked more delighted when Roman stood from his chair and forced his feet and hands to obey his wish to turn towards the door instead of throttling the man in front of him.

_Cure_ him?

Oh, Roman was livid.

But he made it to the door, his hand reaching for the handle –

Delbruck’s arm suddenly found its way into his vision, the doctor’s large hand flat on the door, stopping it from opening. Roman turned, finding the doctor standing just behind him, bending down slightly so that he was eye-level.

And close.

Far too close.

Close enough that Roman could feel the amused sigh that Delbruck gave on his face, the doctor’s hand still against the door beside Roman’s head. 

Roman’s anger took a stumble, and fear surged to take its place. He was used to being caged by bars and titles. He was _not_ used to being caged by another person’s body.

“Forgive me,” Delbruck said, his lips curving upwards. “It’s so rare you show me anger, Roman. Is it because you’re mad that you’ve been lying to yourself for so long? I suppose you’re used to lying to everyone else. Not nice, is it?”

“Get away from me.”

Delbruck’s eyes dimmed, and he slipped back into his sturdy professionalism with the ease of slipping into bed after a long day. He removed his hand from the door and Roman didn’t hesitate to turn, wrench the door open and step outside, making sure to pause and slam the door behind him.

He would not flee from Delbruck.

But stalk?

Fine with him.

He made it past Crichten – who smoothly raised a brow at him walking so purposefully away from Delbruck’s office – and frowned at neither Patton nor Logan being at the dining hall. Glad to get away from doctors, Roman started a brisk jog towards his bedroom – only hesitating the slightest amount before going a little further and kicking the barred door to Logan’s bedroom in instead.

He was rewarded instantly at Logan’s irritated glare – but it was not the reward he wanted.

“Patton’s waiting in _your_ bedroom,” Logan said, his voice the embodiment of the steel bars that Roman had just kicked. “You passed him. Did you not look?”

“I looked at your ugly face,” Roman muttered, walking backwards until he reached his own bedroom once again. 

Seeing Patton sitting cross-legged with his back leaning against Roman’s bed was the opposite of what he’d felt in Delbruck’s office. Anger dissipated and fear sank into the oppressive feeling of relief. 

“What’s wrong?” Patton said, holding his arms out to Roman with their usual familiarity. “Roman?”

Roman closed the door behind him, sank to the floor and crawled over to Patton so that he could sprawl with his head on his friend’s lap. “I showed him anger,” Roman said. “I shouldn’t have done that, because now he _knows_ what’ll make me angry.”

“What did make you angry?” Patton asked, beginning to play with Roman’s hair. 

Roman concentrated for the briefest of moments.

He could feel his hair being played with – he could feel Patton’s legs straining under the weight of his head, Patton’s warmth, could see Patton concentrating on his sole task to make Roman’s hair pretty. 

If Patton was not real, Roman did not want to be real either.

“He told me you didn’t exist.” Patton’s fingers stilled at Roman’s hair. “He told me that I’d imagined you, that you are nothing, but my dreams and darkest wishes personified.”  
He expected Patton to laugh, to groan and continue plaiting his hair. 

He did not expect Patton to freeze so entirely. 

“He said that I’m – I’m not real?” Roman sat up too quickly at the utter hurt in Patton’s voice – his vision was laced with black for a few seconds, during which Patton pushed him lightly away from him and edged away from Roman. 

“Patton, Patton,” Roman said, trying to force a pretty smile to his lips despite the rising panic he felt. “It’s just Delbruck trying to control me, to scare me!”

“No one else sees me, Roman,” Patton whispered. “It’s been just you for years. I don’t get evaluated, I don’t get talked to, I don’t get recognised –“

Roman grabbed his friend’s face, forcing Patton to look at him. “You are real, Patton! Feel this?” He brought his other hand up to press his palm into Patton’s cheek, running his thumb down his friend’s jaw. “Feel that? You’re real.”

Patton pushed Roman away – the push itself harmless. But Roman felt the hurt spearing itself through his chest as he staggered away a single step. “Or,” Patton whispered, his voice so delicate, “what if you’re just mad?”

Roman felt his lip draw into a wordless snarl and bit down the noise. “I am sane, Patton.”

“You’re in an insane asylum, Roman,” Patton said, his voice still that little whisper. A part of Roman knew that Patton was just panicking, just running through his mind to find a million things that would prove Delbruck right. But the bigger part was getting worked up, getting antsy, wanting to do something. 

If he couldn’t prove to his friend that he was real, what hope did they have to achieve their dream of getting out? 

“Wait here,” Roman said, picking himself off the floor and hurtling around the corner, back to where Logan was reading a book on his bed. “You.”

Logan didn’t even look up. Roman let himself in, being considerately gentler with the door this time. Logan only looked at him over the rim of his glasses once Roman stood before him with his arms crossed. “What do you want, brat?”

“Same thing as you, nerd,” Roman said, and reached out to pluck the book from out of Logan’s hands. The darker-haired male looked downright murderous, which was more than enough prompting that Roman needed to start backing up, taking the book with him. “Come and get it,” Roman said, brandishing the book like a tray of biscuits. 

“Give it to me,” Logan said, calmly. 

Roman had long since learned that when Logan was calm, that was when he was at his most dangerous. 

So he ran, infinitely glad that Logan didn’t hesitate to follow him with a dark frown on his face, the sounds of Patton crying spurring him on. 

*

A few minutes later saw Logan smoothly tripping Roman onto the floor, not hesitating to stand cruelly above him with crossed arms and a threatening shoe raised in order to kick him into further submission. 

“Where is it?” Logan hissed, his dark eyes glittering behind his glasses as he searched up and down Roman’s body to find his book.

“You’ll get it back,” Roman hissed right back, rubbing his hands together in order to relieve the stinging in his palms. “But only after you help me.”

“What,” Logan said, baring his teeth as he sneered, “could I possibly do to help you?”

Roman checked where they were – at the end of a corridor, leading to one of the recreational areas where patients sometimes were allowed to go. There were no other sounds than Logan’s slight panting and the faint murmurs of conversation on the other side of the wall.

“Patton’s file,” Roman said, simply. Logan froze, his expression carved onto his face – a sign that told Roman that the boy was running through the implications, the plan, the reasons that Roman wouldn’t have to tell him. 

“You need me because Patton’s too upset and you can’t read,” Logan murmured. 

“Patton is perfectly fine,” Roman argued, knowing perfectly well that Patton would be fine after they proved that he existed out of Roman’s mind. Logan fixed him with a scathing look, to which Roman rolled his eyes. “And fine, I can’t read, so what?”

“You know, there is another piece of proof that we don’t need to break into a doctor’s office for,” Logan said, after a few moments. “I can see Patton as well.”

“You’re human,” Roman said, the questionable truth tasting sour in his mouth. When it stung his mouth to tell the truth, was it truly a crime to continuously tell the opposite? “He won’t trust you. The only thing real about this place is the paperwork. I want to give him the concrete evidence. Something he can read over and over.”

Logan raised an eyebrow, and for a sickening moment, Roman thought he was going to refuse. Thought that he’d overestimated just how much a psychopath would invest in two useless asylum patients. 

But then Logan shrugged – a calculated move, a flawless move that he’d probably spent hours watching others perform so that he could practice it for himself. “I was bored anyway,” he said.

And just like that, Logan and Roman were allies.


	4. The Definition of Manipulation

“You know, you could just be another person that I imagined.”

It was only because Roman felt so oddly buoyant, so jubilant at Logan agreeing to ally with him on a heist that he felt secure enough to make a joke about how sane he truly was. His mood was only more improved at seeing just how disgusted the suggestion made Logan.

“You think that that midget thing you call a brain could have imagined _me_?” Logan summarized, his lip curling. “Doubtful. I also have an extensive memory of my life before the asylum. You couldn’t know it.”

“I think you’re underestimating my creativity,” Roman countered, before scrunching up his nose at Logan. “You could at least thank me for your good looks.”

It seemed Logan was rather busy at taking over spying than listening to Roman, which Roman was infinitely thankful for. “What was that?”

“I said that you could at least thank me for not making you a crook.”

Logan did not look impressed – and it was only because Roman was as close as he was to Logan that he could decode the miniature moves of his face in order to decipher the bigger mood swings attached to them. The slightest movement of the elegant boy’s eyebrows meant something – and Roman was absurdly pleased that he was beginning to puzzle it out.

If only because he was certain this skill would ensure that he could irritate Logan much more efficiently after they’d proved that their best friend was, in fact, a real person. 

That was the goal that Logan and Roman now shared, huddled under a table at one of the checkpoints. One of the nurses had left to light the stove in the other room, placing a kettle full of water over the flames before returning to her post just a few minutes ago, and Roman and Logan had unanimously agreed to wait for her to return to the kettle when the water was ready in order for them to break out and continue to the archives. 

At least, that was the version of events that Roman would rather have believed in. Roman shook himself – he didn’t like lying to himself in his thoughts. What had actually happened was that Logan had hissed that they wait, whilst Roman had insisted on moving whilst they had the chance to go immediately then and there.

Logan had only won the dispute by delivering a well-placed kick to Roman’s ankle, downing the boy so that it was easy for Logan to kick him further under a desk and join him, pressing both himself and Roman into the shadows. Roman didn’t particularly want to think that hard about it – if only because his ankle was still throbbing and concentrating on that only made him angry. 

He’d need anger later, for when they found Patton’s file.

“The water’s steaming,” Logan whispered into Roman’s ear.

If there was one positive about performing a heist with Logan, it was that he seemed to agree with Roman on just how to be sneaky. For when the nurse indeed stood up and checked down the corridor, stretching as she walked into the opposite room to make herself some tea, it was Logan who moved first. 

Roman caught up in no time, both boys padding soundlessly through the doors that they could manage to get past without key cards. The archives room was not one such door that required a key presented – after all, most patients were allowed to see their own files during their monthly examinations by Delbruck anyway. 

Roman was the one who pulled his sleeve around his hand and grabbed the handle through the material – a gesture that Logan raised his eyebrows at but didn’t insult, for a change. What Logan was not aware of was the punishment Roman had once had to go through after he and Patton had been caught in the kitchens after hours on one of their heists.

Their fingerprints had been found on the door handle, Crichten had told Roman, before taking him to his punishment – whilst Patton had remained unacknowledged and unpunished. Roman would not deny the thought that crossed his mind, unfounded and possessing the ability to make him ashamed for even contemplating such a thing – that Patton had _known_ that only Roman would get punished, and had gotten him to do it anyway, knowing that they’d get caught and Patton would get away with it… Testing, with a subtle innocence, just how invisible he was. Roman would be the price Patton paid, in that endeavour.

Roman hated being punished by the Sanderium Asylum’s standards.

He forced his thoughts away from that thought, afraid that merely remembering what they did would turn his palm sweaty and opened the door slowly.

Most doors would only creak if opened hastily, after all. That had been yet another lesson learned through heists with Patton. 

“I’ll search, you guard,” Logan said, either pretending to ignore Roman poking his tongue out or genuinely not seeing it – Roman didn’t know which scenario he found more desirable, but didn’t dare speak as he crouched by the now-closed door and led down, placing his eye along the bottom line of the door. 

It wasn’t much, but it was enough to see if footsteps were approaching. And as long as they didn’t turn the light on, they wouldn’t be seen inside a room they weren’t supposed to be in. 

Logan wasted no time, working efficiently enough that Roman held his tongue – knowing that if he issued warnings and orders, it’d only slow Logan down. This is what it meant to be allies; Roman knew what would be best for Logan’s tasks from the months of irritating him, of getting to know how he worked. He was not Patton, not a friend. But in this room, where they were facing punishment together when caught, they were something rather more powerful.

Allies.

Roman liked it.

His body was getting slowly colder, the floor leeching most of his warmth away, which was how Roman could tell that it had been a few minutes when Logan gave a hushed exclamation for Roman’s benefit alone.

Logan wasn’t excited, after all – he had only made the sound to attract Roman’s attention, he hissed to Roman the moment he’d made the sound. “I found it.”

“It _is_ real?” Roman said. 

It was ridiculous, the amount of relief that washed over him, knowing that Patton was indeed real. Because if Patton was real, then Roman was not crazy. His imagination was not dangerous, and certainly not wild enough to create an illusionary friend for himself. 

Not without his consent, after all.

“Of course it is,” Logan said, pushing his glasses back up his straight nose. “If I could see Patton, it always meant that Patton was real.”

“Why do you even care?” Roman asked, fixing his eyes back to the crack under the door.

Logan’s foot found itself at Roman’s ankle once again, Logan’s glasses flashing dangerously. “I don’t. The only reason I am here is because you took my book.”

Roman didn’t believe it – a thing that amazed him, for a mere moment. Logan was much akin to the cruel, twisted gates that entrapped them all within the grounds – made of steel, unbending regardless of just how much the wind howled and threw itself at it. But the fence itself was not a cruel thing – after all, its thorns and barbs were shaped not by itself, but by those who made it.

He had first thought of Logan as a rich boy not wanted by his parents – but it was more than that.

_Ah_, Roman revised his thoughts. _Rich parents are scared of their son_.

And Logan was so used to people being scared of him; the dull acceptance was in every movement he made, even though he’d probably made it so to be efficient. Logan had been taught from a young age that fear was a tool that he could use – at least, that was the pretty iteration that Roman put into words in his head. 

Fear was an emotion that Logan had seen damage people, had seen force people to give their own son up to an insane asylum. Roman did not blame him for insisting that he didn’t have emotions – not when Logan had seen it destroy people.

The boy who insisted he was sane paired with the boy who insisted he was emotionless – Roman liked it. 

And then he came to his senses and kicked Logan back in the ankle, muttering swear words at him that would have been much louder were it not for the crippling sense of impending doom that cooed to him that they were going to get caught. 

“What does it say?” Roman breathed, eyes still on the door now that Logan had stopped hissing about his ankle. “That he’s real?”

Logan was quiet for a few more seconds, which meant that Roman was alone with his own thoughts for an answer. He turned to snap at Logan to read the words aloud to him so that he, too, could listen to undeniable proof that his friend was real and flesh and blood, but what he saw shut him up rather quickly.

Logan’s pretty, angular face – a thing that always looked like it had been hewn from marble – was blank as his glittering eyes swept the paper in brutally short strokes. 

Blank meant that Logan had no idea of the expression that was appropriate to draw up and into his face.

Blank meant that whatever he was reading was so domineering in his own mind that he had no thoughts to send to the muscles in his face – not to twitch an eyebrow, not to sneer at Logan, not to bite his lip as he always did when he was reading.

Blank meant danger.

“Did you tell Patton what we were doing?”

Logan’s voice was soft, unguarded.

Roman would have liked it immensely if it hadn’t confirmed all of the things he’d thought to himself in the few seconds of silence that Logan hadn’t answered vocally. 

“Yes,” he said, because he hadn’t.

Logan looked at him and knew what truth he’d meant to say. “So you didn’t. Good. We’re going to pretend we never found this.”

“Lying?” Roman summed up, looking at Logan carefully. He’d spent far too much time looking at him for his own liking, but he was forced into the habit in order to decode whatever it was the boy was unknowingly communicating or feeling. “We can’t lie to Patton.”

“We can, and we will.”

“You cannot do this,” Roman hissed, and got up from the floor. He gripped Logan’s arm tightly – tightly enough to make Logan’s face scrunch up in anger. “We are a team – we are _us_. And we are used to _them_ not telling us things – we can’t do the same to ourselves. Are we understood?”

Logan gave him a scorching look that told him that if Logan could have his way, Roman would have burst into flames right that moment. Luckily, no other flame ignited Roman other than his will to know exactly what was on the file bearing his best friend’s name. “Understood.” Logan flipped open the file once again, leaning it towards Roman slightly so that Roman could look at the letters on the page.

And whilst Roman had claimed he couldn’t read, he could instead look at and understand the attached pictures.

“Patton was admitted to the mental asylum years ago,” Logan summarised, his fingers tracing whichever sentence he had found important. “But – but he was never meant to be on level two. He was admitted and went straight to level one for being ‘_dangerously manipulative_’ and ‘_manic depressive_’.”

Roman flinched – he knew depression. He knew about the sadness that clung to a person no matter how much they attempted to loosen its claws, only to find that the beast had teeth too. But he hadn’t known that Patton suffered from it.

“He’s been hurting so badly,” Roman whispered, for his own benefit. “And I didn’t see it. And the damn doctors have done nothing to help him –“

“You’re focussing on the wrong part,” Logan said, an eyebrow rising. “He’s not meant to be on this floor, Roman. Delbruck’s notes say that he quite literally scared the doctors on the floor below that they didn’t want him on their floor anymore – but they liked him too much to send him down to the ground floor, or the basement. They sent him up here – where Delbruck decided that if Patton no longer existed, he couldn’t manipulate anyone.”

“So, what,” Roman said, waving a hand. “He’s been sad, he’s been hurting, and no one has done anything! They’re all cowards.”

Coward was the worst insult anyone could give anyone. 

In Roman’s not-so-humble opinion, anyway. 

“Roman,” Logan said, speaking slowly. “He is most likely manipulating us.”

Roman blinked at him, stunned that the psychopath could have such a problem with it. “And?” 

Logan closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Are you actually shi-“

The door opened. 

The most remarkable thing about Logan was his ability to recover from new information quickly and soundlessly. He placed the file silently back in its box, most likely in the exact same place that he had found it and crept into the shadows of the room.

Actually, Roman thought, that was the second most remarkable thing.

What was in fact the most staggeringly remarkable thing was that Logan had grabbed his hand and tugged Roman along with him.

Roman was not such a fool to complain – not when he was holding his breath, waiting for the doctors to come in and find them. “Level one is actually emptying a lot of its patients onto the ground floor; they’re pressuring Delbruck to give them some of ours.”

Logan’s hand clenched around Roman’s and on another day, Roman would have taken it as a challenge and promptly began clenching back. But unfortunately, he too recognised Crichten’s voice as a threat and was rather busy ducking low behind some of the shelves, following Logan’s moves. 

“So greedy,” one of the nurses cooed in response, her heels tapping on the ground.

Crichten huffed a breath, but Roman was disgustingly used to him enough so that he could hear the twisted smile behind it. Roman couldn’t see either of them – the room that he and Logan were hiding in was too dark, and both were crouching behind the rather large boxes at the bottom, much too scared to even dare a peak over the lids. 

“You wouldn’t be complaining if you knew some of the people we have in here,” he then said. 

“Perhaps so,” the nurse replied. “Are you certain that you want to clear this room out now? I just got some of today’s sandwiches from the kitchen; we could have tea first.”

“Say no more,” Crichten said, shutting the door.

“He didn’t even try,” Logan breathed into Roman’s ear. “Didn’t even want to do his job.”

“That man is a saint,” Roman replied, placing his free hand over his heart. Roman liked exercising and liked racing. But when his heart had decided to spontaneously sign up for one of the free sprints with no other competitors, seemingly just for fun, he decided he had a right to be annoyed with his own organ. “I will never insult him again in my lifetime.” Both Logan and Roman recognised the lie. They fell into silent giggles, adrenaline still gnawing its way through their veins. “You can laugh,” Roman whispered, delighted.

“I can pretend something is funny,” Logan sniped back. 

Roman wasted no time in tackling him, sitting over his stomach and placing the hand that Logan was still holding over Logan’s chest. “Your heart is pounding just as much as mine,” Roman told him, feeling the echo of Logan’s heartbeat through his chest. Logan’s fingers freed themselves from Roman’s and promptly formed a fist, punching Roman’s gut so that the boy had to sprawl off him. “You can’t punch away evidence that you can feel things,” Roman gasped, holding his stomach as he got to his feet. 

“I don’t feel things,” Logan said, shortly, and joined him. “Let’s get out before they finish their tea.”

Logan waited for Roman to check the bottom of the door again, waiting for Roman to give him a rather rude gesture instead of the average thumbs up as a confirmation that it was clear. They opened the door, slowly, and inched back out into the well-lit corridor.

“Took you long enough.”

Roman bit his lip hard enough to draw blood as his soul temporarily ejected itself from his body in response.

Patton was leaning against the wall, his eyes red and puffy, his hands trembling at his sides. “I stole some sandwiches from the kitchen and delivered them anonymously to the nurse… They should be eating them right now. I didn’t want them to find you -”

Logan, who already looked faintly delighted at Roman’s exaggerated show at grabbing his heart, levelled a look at Patton and strode off without speaking. 

Patton looked after him with poorly concealed heartbreak.

“We found your file, Pat,” Roman said, and grabbed his friend’s hand. “Feel this?”

His hand around Patton’s was not like Logan’s. Logan’s hand had been strong, firm, sure of where the fingers went and where to pressure the other hand in order to soothe or hurt. Patton’s hand was soft, timid, only certain of where to interlock fingers because of the number of times they had grabbed each other’s hand for the other’s unconditional support. 

“Feel this?” Roman repeated, beginning to lead Patton after Logan. “You’re real.”

They couldn’t talk much as they stole their way back to their rooms, but Roman did not drop Patton’s hand until they all found themselves inside of Roman’s room. Logan waited to close the barred door behind them all, and Patton sat himself on top of Roman’s already messy bed. 

“If you two had been caught, you would’ve been punished,” Patton started, his eyes bright with warning. “Don’t you ever do something like that again.”

Logan ignored this as he leaned coolly against the wall, shooting a look at Roman that suggested he was reaching the end of his patience. Roman decided to take over. “We won’t,” he said, earnestly – aware that he was a liar. But Patton was also aware that he was a liar, and so shot him a hurt look that hurt him a lot more than it usually would.

“When were you going to tell us that you are among the most manipulative in this asylum?” Logan asked, smoothly. Roman and Patton shared a confused look, which earned a glowering scowl from Logan that resulted purely from Roman’s confusion. “Roman, don’t you even think about being puzzled, you are well aware of what I’m talking about.”

“Oh yeah,” Roman said, altering his face to something that was more of a pout. 

“That’s worse,” Patton told him, covering his mouth to halt a giggle. 

Roman threw his hands up. “I just can’t please you people.”

“I was just – when I thought I might not be real, that I might have just been something Roman dreamed up – “ 

“Emotions,” Logan groaned, shaking his head. “Bane of my existence.” 

Patton looked ready to agree with him, a thing that scared Roman immensely for about two seconds until he distracted himself by looking at a bug in the window. “Does it scare you? About me?”

“No,” Roman and Logan said in sync.

Roman wasn’t shocked – disgusted by the fact that he and Logan had found something to irrevocably agree on, perhaps. But he wasn’t shocked, because in this matter they were still allies. 

“I don’t get scared,” Logan offered, as if it was an explanation that Patton would cheer up at. “You don’t scare me, because I can’t be manipulated into doing something I don’t want to do in the first place.”

“I love you,” Roman said, shrugging. “And if we want to get out of here, we’ll need every single skill we collectively possess.”

“I didn’t want to scare people,” Patton said, relieved. 

“You were raised heavily influenced by religion, your file said,” Logan supplied. “You told the doctors on floor one that you only made people do things in order to better themselves, correct?”

“I got the man down the street to stop smoking, once,” Patton replied, slowly. “I just want people to be good people. I think everyone can be good.”

Roman liked that sentiment – to do things because one was so desperately in love with the small things that everyone else did to try and save them from the bad things in life. But it was neither a feasible or healthy one. “Some flowers just don’t grow to bear flowers, Pat,” Roman said. “Some of them are planted to grow thorns.”

“But we can help them!” Patton said, instantly. “We can help them –“

“Thorns are primarily on plants for defence – you cannot help them by shearing them off, for you are only ridding them of their distractions and defences.”

Patton turned to Logan with his eyes shining – not with any particular emotion, but with tears. “There’s got to be some way –“

Roman stood, smiling gently as he crossed the room and hugged Patton fiercely. There was not an inch of Patton that Roman did not love unconditionally – it was in Roman’s code. There were only a select few things that were inevitably a part of him – the wind, the storms, his imagination, and Patton. 

Perhaps even Logan once a month.

That did not mean, despite the love that Roman held for Patton, that there was nothing bad about Patton. 

But in his case, all that was bad stemmed from the overwhelming desire for others to be good. 

But as Roman looked over the top of Patton’s head and met eyes with Logan, he found that they were still allies – for he could read his thoughts in the way that his eyes shifted. Logan was planning on using Patton to get them out of here – and Roman knew Patton wouldn’t hesitate to do so. It was even more likely that Patton knew full well what this revelation had meant - and would use them, in turn.

He fell asleep later that night, wondering if this was their destiny – to use each other until one day they were more each other than themselves.

He’d think about it later.


	5. The Definition of Danger

The next week, a new patient was admitted to floor two. 

Ordinarily it would have been questionable for Roman to notice anything like that. He was so busy with Logan and Patton every day that he rarely took notice of anyone outside their trio – his scattered mind picking apart every single one of their facial expressions, their jokes, their habits.

Logan and Patton were infinite, and Roman was more than happy to bask in their endless meanings. 

However, he noticed the new patient.

Mostly because Roman ran straight into him the moment he stepped through the dining room door just behind Crichten, which was perhaps not the most flawless impression he’d ever created for himself. He mentally noted it down to be a memorable one, nonetheless.

“Roman,” Crichten said, his voice warm in the sense that it would soon roast him alive when they were alone for his monthly evaluation, “what are you doing on top of our new guest?”

It was never the word _patient_ that the doctors used in order to describe their victims; always _guest_, a word that implied impermanence because it mocked all of those that were well aware that their stay was going to be infinite. 

“I’m evaluating him,” Roman said, quickly, leaning forwards over the newcomer to hide his face from Crichten. “I’m training to be like you.”

He scrubbed the hot soup that Logan had flung at him out of his eyes, forbidding Crichten to see – for if he saw, there’d be a note made about his immaturity, and another resultant meeting with Delbruck in his office. 

Roman did not label himself as a coward but facing Delbruck when the memory of his face being so close to Roman’s was still fresh enough that he could remember the feeling of the doctor’s breath on his face... It did not make him comfortable. 

A second pair of hands helped him brush the soup away from his eyes, and Roman looked at the boy beneath him. 

He was pretty – curved, cheeks already split into a confused grin, brown eyes that were alight with sorrow. Hair that had been rushed through by the wind – a physical thing that told Roman that the wind had danced through it, had marked it, had liked it.

If the wind liked such things as the boy beneath him, it was already a given that Roman would too.

Roman got up, holding out a hand to help the boy to his feet, grinning at him. 

“Good manners,” Crichten praised, sarcastically. “You wouldn’t have needed to display it if you hadn’t been so clumsy in the first place.”

“It’s a talent,” Roman said, because it was. 

Crichten smiled then, and Roman’s grin froze on his face. “I have something of yours, Roman – come to my office in half an hour, won’t you?”

Roman stayed silent as the new patient’s hand slipped from his and Crichten led the newest inmate away, the doctor not bothering to look over his shoulder back at Roman. The new _guest_ did – offering a small, confused smile that would have warmed Roman’s heart had it not been frozen by the doctor half a moment before. 

“Logan, you twit, why did you do that when Crichten could’ve seen –“ Roman started, stalking back towards the table. His voice faltered off – both Patton and Logan were looking after the newest patient with the same expression in their eyes. “Stop it.”

Patton blinked at looked at Roman with a question framed in his eyebrow. “Stop what?”

“You’re looking at him like he’s a piece of meat,” Roman said. “Both you and Logan.”

“Technically speaking he _is_ a piece of meat.” 

“Shut up, Logan.”

Patton looked wholly innocent – which wasn’t hard for Patton to do. His face was inherently good – and since Logan had read his file aloud, Roman had begun to see how cleverly Patton used his face when talking to others. Perhaps it was an unconscious thing – perhaps not. “It’s just that he’s new, Roman. He might know things!”

“Like how to get out,” Logan said, simply. 

“You are not going to use that boy to get us out,” Roman told them, ignoring the way that Logan was scanning Patton with a look of poisoned rationality. “He –“

“You straddle a boy for a few seconds and suddenly you’re in love,” Logan scoffed. 

Patton blushed at the implication, but Roman scoffed right back. “I wouldn’t have had to straddle him if some pompous wart hadn’t flung soup into my eyes.”

“I told you that my aim was impeccable; you told me that you didn’t see me as the type to have good aim, so I ensured that you would understand.”

“It didn’t mean you had to attempt blinding me! Now I’ve got to go and see Crichten in his office.”

Logan stood up, prompting Patton to do the same. Roman followed them, wondering just how they had become so entirely magnetic to each other – had he spent far too long watching them, missing out on the connection they now so obviously had? “I’ve never been in Crichten’s office,” Logan said, his voice low as he began to walk towards the cells that were Roman’s and his own. “Only ever Delbruck’s.”

“Fantastic,” Roman replied. “Want to make bets to see if I’ll survive?”

Patton looked shocked. “Why on earth would we do that? You’re going to live regardless –“

Logan met Roman’s flat stare with one of his own. “Three days of desserts says you don’t return,” Logan said. Roman contemplated yelling at them both but quickly gave up – it wouldn’t do to draw more attention to himself, even as he was loathe to admit. 

“I’ll go there early,” Roman said, leaving Patton and Logan at his door. “You never know, I might hear something useful.”

He did start to walk off until he was out of sight – but nerves began causing his fingers to shake, and he felt a wave of unpleasant heat course through his body as his muscles automatically began preparing him for either fighting or flight. 

So he stopped and leaned against the wall, listening to the two that he’d left behind, knowing their voices would anchor him a little in the sea that was panic. 

“You’re not to look like that again,” Logan was saying. “It’s such an obvious look; you might as well have been yelling ‘we’re going to use you’ across the dining hall.”

Patton’s voice soared into the tone that was most commonly associated with distress. “Can we stop calling it that? I just think he might be able to help us.”

“I don’t know what to call it,” Logan said, after a few beats of silence. “I don’t like it. I don’t like seeing you looking at others like that.” Roman almost marched back into the room with his fists raised – wondering idly if someone so incredibly smart could be so shallowly stupid. 

“I think –“

Logan’s voice was a whip, cutting through the shakiness of Patton. “No.” 

“No?”

“Use me, and me alone.”

Roman held his breath – and from the lack of sound in Logan’s bedroom, it sounded like neither of the pair in there were doing so either. 

“U-use you?”

“Use me. There’s no point trying to tell me that you don’t use people, Patton. I’ve seen it, I know you’re doing it. But if you’re not using me, then you’re using someone else, and I hate it. Use me and only me.”

_What an odd way to confess to someone_, Roman thought, and walked silently down the corridor towards Crichten’s office.

*

Roman walked straight into the newest patient of Sanderium Asylum just outside the office. 

They were both around the same height now that both were standing – but that did nothing except ail them as they rubbed their aching foreheads, their noses searing pain. 

“Have you quite done with the attempts to kill our newest guest?” Crichten hissed, pressing his hand to Roman’s shoulder with the force of a claw. “What is wrong with you?”

If Roman was going to tell the truth, he’d have told Crichten about his head swimming with the knowledge that somewhere, his best friend and his ally were most likely debating on how best to utilize the boy he’d just smacked heads with.

Luckily, Roman was a liar. 

“Everything that isn’t right,” he said, shooting an apologetic look at the patient. “I’m sorry – I just came around this corner and –“

“It’s fine,” the boy said, delight sparking in his brown eyes. “My name’s Thomas.”

“His is Roman,” Crichten supplied for him, much to his disdain. “Roman here is one of our longest guests at floor two – although with his track record of injuring other people, we’ll see if it’s about to change.”

“You make it sound like I went up to people and bludgeoned them to death!” Roman protested, to which Thomas looked faintly alarmed. He rushed to cover his mistake. “I didn’t. He’s just exaggerating – I might’ve injured you twice already, but let’s not make a tradition of that –“

“You’re babbling, boy,” Crichten said, teeth bared as his lips spread in what – if he were truly human, which Roman doubted – would have once been a smile. “Sign of nervousness, that.”

“Just let me in your office,” Roman said, giving up on his attempt. Thomas would fade into the background like everyone else on floor two did, regardless of whether he spoke sometimes or not.

It was odd how disappointed he felt, though. 

“Recognise this, Roman?” Crichten said, leading Roman into his office with an air of impending doom. Roman allowed his gaze to wander around – to notice the bare walls, the neat stack of notes in the corner of the barely used desk, the dingy light hanging from the ceiling. “Look at me.”

Roman looked at him.

Correction – Roman looked at the book that he was holding. 

“It’s not mine,” Roman said, fast.

Too fast – he had to blurt it out, because the truth stung his mouth whenever he told it. Because he was telling a rare truth, and the book that he’d snatched from Logan’s hands a week ago was not his. 

“I believe it was Logan’s,” Crichten said, admiring the simple, dark blue cover. “But Logan would never leave his possessions carelessly behind. And it is a book about a fictional world – where a prince and a knight are forced to be soulmates.”

Roman closed his mouth – which only made him starkly aware that it had been hanging open. It was just his luck that the book sounded like one he would enjoy – princes and adventure, after all, was his brand. 

There was another fact that was suddenly very, very obvious. 

Logan had claimed that he’d only come to help Roman find Patton’s file because Roman had stolen his book, but he hadn’t asked for it back. Not even once. Roman came to the realization that he perhaps was not the only liar of their friendship group. 

But naturally Roman had dropped the book and forgotten completely about it, his attention fleeing like some wild thing into the forest. “I can’t read. What need have I for a book?”

“I found it a week ago near the recreational areas,” Crichten said, placing the book deliberately on the desk. “Were you there?”

Roman felt his face flush. “Why didn’t you return it to me a week ago?”

“Why would I return it to you if it wasn’t yours?”

And just like that, Roman fell into Crichten’s trap. “I did nothing,” Roman said, voice rising. “Absolutely nothing. I dropped a book whilst out for a walk, and that’s it. There’s no bigger plot, and nothing more to know.”

Crichten’s eyes softened – but not kindly. It was like watching a steel sword melt into the liquid form; Roman remained fully aware that whilst he wouldn’t be stabbed, he could still very well be boiled alive in the molten grey. “Come on, now, boy,” he said. “Now I know what the truth isn’t. Do we need to take a trip to Doctor Delbruck? He’s always looking out for you, you know.”

“I would rather die than go back to Delbruck,” Roman snapped. 

Crichten’s smile was a thing as deadly as a blade. “Do you have a complaint about Delbruck?”

“Of course not,” Roman snapped, wired tight. He was aware of the danger of his situation, watching it like a cat watching a flame. But he wound it around himself like armour, preventing the possibility of Crichten indeed stabbing him. 

“Too bad, boy,” Crichten said. “We have to take things like this seriously. What about a temporary reassignment?”

Roman didn’t like many words of the sentence, which wasn’t helped at all by the fact it was spoken by Crichten. Temporary was a lie. Anything could be temporary. Humans were temporary, life was temporary. Things that were incredibly long would still not run out in Roman’s lifetime. 

The other word –

“Reassignment?”

Crichten stood up and held open his door, Roman remaining unmoving. “Let’s go and see level one, shall we? The caretaker is around your age, would you believe? He’s grown up around here, or something. We’ll see if you two get on.”

“There’s no need for me to leave this floor,” Roman said – but then Crichten was grabbing at the back of his collar, constricting his airway until he shot to his feet and moved with him, being dragged along like little more than a common prisoner. 

He saw the patients around watching them – watching him being dragged through the corridors, heading towards the stairs that he had been warned time and time again that he hadn’t wanted to go near. 

His feet were dragging, and he was a thing of complete and utter fear.

It was because his veins were carrying fear instead of oxygen and his heart was pumping fear into his blood that he shoved away from Crichten with all of his might, righting his shirt with such dignity that he almost laughed at himself. “You know what?” He said, infinitely glad that his voice remained strong and arrogant and _without fear_. “Fine. If it means no doctors try and –“ The memory of what Delbruck had nearly done struck him silent for a mere beat, but he shoved it away from himself – stopped himself from seeing Delbruck’s eyes on his lips, stopped the resultant wave of trepidation. “Fine. I’ll go. Temporarily. If you tell me one thing.”

Crichten straightened himself, eyes monitoring the fact that they had an audience.

Roman, inexplicably, found Thomas’s eyes in the crowd. They were indeed the warmest brown he’d seen – and the sanest. 

“Patton,” Roman said, loudly. He looked at Crichten as flatly as he could. “Patton is real. Yes or no?”

Crichten looked like if he could have, he would have growled. “No. He is not.”

And Roman looked pityingly at this man, this broken excuse for a doctor. “Liar.”

Every patient on floor two knew only three things about Roman. The first was his name; the second was that he was insane. One was the truth, one was a lie – and on his good days, Roman could normally tell which was which.

But number three was that Roman was a liar.

And liars knew other liars. 

They could sense each other – could see through the skins that the others wore, could taste the lies in the air, could hear the echo of the words as they tried to shout their honesty.

So the patients heard Roman call another person a liar and recognised it for a rare truth.

Crichten didn’t hesitate to send the patients scattering to their cells – not seeing the fact that Thomas had ducked around the wall, waiting to see what would happen. Roman couldn’t explain why he was so attuned to the newest patient, so quickly, without any words being shared. 

Crichten sighed.

And he rolled back his shoulder and punched Roman in the jaw with brutal suddenness; Roman’s world teetered on an axis and crumbled around him. The last thing he could piece together in his sight of pain and black was the disgusted turn of the heel that Crichten showed, turning away from him with only a single sentence left.

“Your new caretaker’s name will be Virgil, and I’ll have him take you down.”


End file.
